Wood...

[otakar]

Cool. I understand the advantages of the dynamic nature of this, though I think that if you use texture images with proper displacement and a power-fractal overlay it can look incredibly realistic. The question is will this be more efficient to render (sounds like it may be if you use a high res texture image). Yes, planks would be nice. For floors (like hardwood floors) I can see a big challenge, unless you make the units square (parquettes) Also, it may be interesting to see if larger-scale variations would be possible (ie. the wood color is not constant over different wood pieces).

[Hetzen]

I think these are up there with V-Ray materials. Awesome work. I'd guess you can only apply these to a whole object rather than it's material id.

[dandelO]

...I'd guess you can only apply these to a whole object rather than it's material id...

Not at all, Sir! You could use any separate wood shader for any 'object part.

I'm just fine tuning a new, completely procedural render, post in a couple of minutes...

[dandelO]

Why is Terragen 2 King? Oh, it just does stuff, like this...

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Ok, there's a couple of little notches where there shouldn't be from some of the plank ends but I can whittle these away easily, it's just a transform issue in one of the slat functions. I'd say, not bad, for a day's work!
I can envisage of all sorts of things here, different woods in different sectors, alternative slat patterns, and grain directions, crazy-paving!

[Kadri]

You crazy guy   How did you do the pattern of individual woods ?

[dandelO]

Fixed the misplaced slat-ends, they appear to be a bit too deep here but they're the same depth as the first decking image, the sun is just shining directly down the length of the boards from the top-right here so, the shadows of the slat-lengths aren't there to balance the shadows at the ends of each board.

[attachimg=#]

You crazy guy    How did you do the pattern of individual woods ?

I'd like to take some time to tidy it up and see if I can make it any simpler before explaining fully how it works, Kadri. I think I can remove one or two nodes here and there first.
Basically, though, it's just careful transforms, and procedural masking and mixing, of two sin function patterns, on both the X and Z axis. I'll carry on tomorrow, bedtime, night!

[Dune]

Your creativity is boundless, Dandel0. This is very interesting! If you'd add some dirt into the notches to get rid of the shininess, it'll be perfect flooring! Add another fractal and you have a dirty floor, sprinkle some sand over it, perhaps sharpen the same copied fractals with a color adjust to get tighter grain, this has endless possibilities. I look forward to your morning work again.

[domdib]

Great work. Now, a challenge... how about some knots? I know you have some approximations of these, but I'm thinking the really gnarly kind.

[Henry Blewer]

This is beautifully done.

[otakar]

Ingenious, now how about some variety in offset and color? See this image: http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/productImages/300/a7/a7af1784-703c-42ca-9a75-ee9ab3bd6f69_300.jpg

I can imagine this will be quite difficult to achieve.

[dandelO]

I can imagine this will be quite difficult to achieve.

I don't imagine it to be too difficult, Otakar. Just as I've planned the plank edge and plank length notches by masking, transforming, then combining their function outputs, so the inverse of these crack functions can be used to create separate 'zones' in the surface.
I just need to implement the plank zone inverts to describe where each wood shader is placed, really, this isn't going to be hard, not now that I have the method of masking and combining the alternating slat functions, that was the tricky part.

I've really made a giant leap yesterday(for me, anyway) playing with functions for this. The hardest part was really masking the lines, now that I have that in the bag, as I said yesterday, I am seeing really many, many ways to lay different woods in different zones, alternating grain on a single surface, there are really no limits now. I'll keep at this, it's a really promising technique, that before I'd have had to have relied on imported b+w masks per zone etc.

I've learned a lot over the past day and night and, it never would have happened without seeing Cypher's camping trip photos and wanting to make a TG scene from a picture in his album. I did, a half-arsed attempt(using image mapped wood) and Richard got me thinking about how to do it procedurally. Give that man a pat on the back, guys!

(When I eventually do retry the scene, I will use a variation of wood4 on the previous page, need to adapt the grain and colours a little)

[Gannaingh]

Awesome work, this looks great!

[dandelO]

Haha, I keep thinking of Planck length through all of this.

Now, how can I incorporate some TG2 quantum physics to speed up the creation process? And, why do I need a vacuum for laminated flooring? Surely a brush is fine!

[dandelO]

Domdib: Some high but localised warping of the heavier noise areas of any given wood, will create some nice knots in the surface.

Cheers, folks!

[dandelO]

Here's a nice shot of a surface with alternating woods, I've also removed the reflectivity from between the cracks:

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This is just step 1 in adding some localised variation, you'll notice it only alternates in one direction, for now...